EU one requires an ID/passport, UK one doesn't -- I'd argue that the EU one is safe and the UK one should get more attention on the validitiy

To his credit, at least he admits this. It’s not like he’s hiding his strategy. He just does whatever will push him to the top of the algorithms and keep viewers engaged.

I'm sick of that excuse. The whole I'm dumb or I don't know or it's for the algorithm excuses people make to try and deflect criticism. Guess I've just seen to many people of prominence use that excuse one to many times over the years.

He worked at Blizzard in the same way that Apple store employees work for Apple. They do, but not in the capacity that's been implied.

Guys a fucking loser. Needs to get a real job.

"Not only I'm not gonna support it, I gonna actively tell people to not support it. Because this is stupid. This is shit. Eat my ass."

— Thor "PirateSoftware" Hall, on the Stop Killing Games proposal.

I know it's not going to happen, but I would love it if legislation could go as far as requiring companies to open-source their engines and servers after maybe a period of time, or on ending support for the game. It could be done ID-style where the company retains full rights of the content and trademarks, which would still require players to buy the game to legally play it.

I'm aware there are a lot of cases where games include middleware that's licensed from 3rd parties that complicate preservation efforts. But if open-sourcing the code is the path taken, there's a simple solution for that: just release what you can, even if what's released is in an unplayable state without the middleware. It then becomes the responsibility of any volunteers to take that code and bring it back to a usable state however they choose.

This drama highlights that there's still a great need for better computer literacy. Anyone with even a basic education in how software, source-code, and software licensing works can tell PirateSoftware is full of shit pretty much immediately. That is, anyone educated who are themselves not grifters.

There's always just people that mess up on the form. But they also monitor the sign rate and saw some periods of higher than normal signing in the middle of the night in the EU - indicating someone might have ran a bot to sign with invalid information. The EU only validates the signatures once the petition is closed, so they need a safe margin where even with a significant amount of invalid signatures, they still make it. Afaik 1.2 mil is about what they would expect for a normal vote of this size to be safe, and 1.4 mil is basically more than enough to compensate for any bad actors.

I blocked this guy from my YouTube suggestions last year after getting heaps of his videos recommended to me, and in every one he comes across as an insufferable know-it-all.

The type of verification depends on the country and some don't have any verification at signing. I'm Swedish and when I signed I just filled out a form, no checks of any kind.

It actually is the most hilarious of ironies that despite what very real harm Thor might have inflicted upon the early stages of the movement through misinformation/mischaracterization; The fact is, I don't think this movement would have come near to exploding the way that it has recently if not for the perfect Rube Goldberg machine of drama surrounding this man in the past 6 months.

Seriously. He could not have Barbara Streisand effected the "Stop Killing Games" movement harder if he tried. It really is such poetic justice. It's a shame that I don't live in the EU or I would gladly sign the initiate myself. Here's to hoping that another EU regulation can have sweeping effects for the US. As a reluctant and very jaded US citizen myself, I harbor no illusions about any real and meaningful consumer protection regulations to ever make it over here. Mega-corpos have simply spent far too much money buying out every level of government, legislature, and regulatory bodies that exist.

Europe really is like a strange beacon of hope for US consumers, as odd as that sounds. Fight the good fight for us as well, brothers.

One of the big reasons many people are "okay" with making fun of him. Is that he could basically make it all go away if he just admitted he was wrong.

The whole thing stems from him being so full of himself that he cannot admit any fault, ever. He has been objectively proven wrong many times on several different topics, there are a lot of situations that heavily indicate misconduct, etc. And he literally went on a stream with a licensed psychiatrist who tried to explain some of his faults. To which he laughed and said "Okay, don't see it that way, but alright".

At the end of the day, he seems almost incapable of admitting that he ever did or said anything wrong. So people keep making fun of him, since he's objectively proven wrong repeatedly.

Don't you know he worked for Blizzard /s

Imagine using a voice changer to sound deeper and cheating in Outer Wilds of all games

I actually do not know who that is. Some YouTuber?

Misgendering people is not funny.

I don't know what happened in details but I really don't hate him, as a member of the video game industry he has the right to make his voice heard.

I'm still glad consumers won here

Ross is not my dad